Design thinking is a way to look at problems and tasks from a different, extraordinary angle, characteristic of creative people. Do not think that this is some kind of gift or talent. All people have this ability, just because of fears, habits, laziness, or the abundance of methods I’ve tried, it’s often neglected, and it’s an ability that you can get a lot of benefits.

Design thinking is also called user or human-directed, emphasizing that the concept implies concern for the client, the buyer or just about the neighbor, which is sure to return kindly in response. For example, the South Korean gas station company S-Oil at the start of its work conducted a detailed survey among motorists and found out that the most common problem of respondents is difficulties with finding parking spaces. To find a free place, drivers had to spin around the parking lot for a long time, driving more than 10 extra kilometers a month, thereby additionally consuming fuel. It would seem that the gas station company is only better off about some one burning gasoline – they will come to refuel faster. But S-Oil is really imbued with the problem. They made it so that the free parking space was visible from afar. When the car is gone, a bright yellow gel ball hangs above the lighthouse. Ko When the car is parked, he pulls the ball by the string, and it goes down – the place is no longer considered free, because the ball is not visible. This feature has brought S-Oil a huge number of grateful customers. Today, the company is one of the largest in its sector in the South Korean market.

History

The term “design thinking” itself was introduced in 1968. It was introduced by Stanford University professor John Arnold in his book Creative Engineering. However, in those days the concept was not appreciated. A decade later, in the book The Sciences of Artificial, Herbert Simon described the principle of design thinking and its stages. This made the approach a little more famous, but real recognition was still far away.

1. The principle of humanism. It implies that any work in the end is aimed at making the life of a person or society better and easier. Thus, whatever you do, you should immediately think about the people who will use your product or service.
2. Uncertainty principle. When a new task arises, you need to try to look at it from different angles, go beyond the usual, post experiments and not indulge your desire to act with proven methods.
3. The principle of redesign. In fact, everything necessary for life in the world has already been created. You can only slightly modify it, improve it, make it more convenient.
4. The principle of testing. When thinking through, it’s important to rely not only on your imagination and theoretical reflections. You should create prototypes, mock-ups – everything to test the idea in practice. So you can identify the main miscalculations at the planning stage.

It wasn’t until 2004 that the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design was opened at Stanfort de. David Kelly became its head. Today, the school is the world’s center of design thinking.

Consistency of design thinking

According to the theory of the Kelly school, in the process of design thinking, we go through several phases. They are all very conditional, because sometimes a brilliant idea arises as if in a second, and it is clearly impossible to distinguish some stages in it .

1. The empathy stage. Here you need to try to stand in the shoes of the target audience as much as possible. What are they worried about? What problems do they need to solve? What would be comfortable for them? For example, the Netflix streaming platform responded to people’s aspirations to watch exclusive quality content at home without purchasing DVDs.
2. Narrowing stage. It is necessary to reduce all experiences into one specific request. For example, how convenient is it to move around the city by your route and not think where to park the car? By the way, hover boards appeared from this request.
3. Generation stage. You have to use the imagination and use the brainstorming technique. No criticism, just free ideas, even the most crazy ones. Only then you can analyze them and select the most feasible ones.
4. Prototype stage. An attempt on a small scale to test, so much the idea works.
5. Test. If everything went well at the prototype stage, then you can expand the area of application of the idea. Perhaps in the future your method will become the most popular in solving similar problems.
   Big business tasks like bringing a new product to market don’t need to apply design thinking, and you can think that way in standard everyday situations.
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Examples of the application of design thinking in various professional fields

In the field of virtual money exchanges, one of the permanent leaders is online casinos. They can only make a profit through online transactions, so they’ve always been as customer-centric as possible . So, they were among the first to pay chips not only by bank transfer, but also with the help of electronic wallets. Similarly, virtual casinos were at the forefront of operations with cryptocurrency.

Another example is that in one of the hospitals in Pittsburgh, when examining young children, it was often necessary to give them sedatives so that they were not afraid of bulky devices, did not scream and did not cry. As a result, someone thought to solve the problem in a different way: the examination rooms were decorated in a pirate style, the devices themselves were designed. they were painted like ships, and black triangles were put on the children’s heads. For young patients, the examination began to look like a fun game, and the consumption of sedatives was reduced by more than 10%